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The New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement
(edition.cnn.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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Interesting take on mastodon on this in this thread: https://hachyderm.io/@Impossible_PhD/111654403989681220
This person seems not to know very much about what they are talking about, despite their confidence in saying it.
It looks like they think the reason AI output can't be copyrighted is because it's been "ruled a derivative work" but that's not the reasoning provided which is that copyright can only protect human creativity, and thus machine output without human involvement can't be copyrighted - with the judge noting the line of what proportion of human contribution is needed is unclear.
The other suits trying to claim the models are derivative works are either yet to be settled or in some cases have been thrown out.
Even in one of the larger suits on whether training is infringement regarding LLMs, the derivative claim has been thrown out:
Social media has really turned into a confirmation bias echo chamber where misinformation can run rampant when people make unsourced broad claims that are successful because they "feel right" even if they aren't.
Perhaps the reason hallucination is such a problem for LLMs is that in the social media data that's a large chunk of their training everyone is so full of shit?
Heh. I think it simply shows us that the fundamental principle of artificial neural nets, really captures how the brain works.
Honestly this can be easily overstated in the case of social media relative to anything else humanity does. But and large no one knows anything and is happy talking and speculating as they do. It was true before social media and it will be after.
The fun part is trying to make sense of it all, thus why I said “interesting”.
I personally have thought the copyright dimension one of the more interesting aspects of AI in the short and medium term and have thought so for years. Happy to hear takes and opinions on the issue, especially as I’m not plugged into the space any more.
If you want an interesting take from a source that understands both the tech and legal sides for real and not just pretend, see this from the EFF:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/how-we-think-about-copyright-and-ai-art-0
It's about the diffusion art models and not LLMs, but most of its points still apply (even the point about a stronger case regarding outputs by plaintiffs whose works can be reproduced, such as in this case).
Cheers!
My immediate reaction to the piece is that insofar as it’s trying to predict the path that the courts will take, the author may be too close to the tech while I can imagine judges readily opting to eschew what they’d feel would be excessive technical details in their reasoning. I’m curious to see how true that is.
For me the essential point, made at the end, is what do creators really want from copyright apart from more money … because any infringement case against AI easily spells oppressive copyright law.
I’m curious to see if a dynamic factor in this is how the courts conceive of what the AI actually is and does. The one byte per work argument may come off as naive for instance and lead a judge construct their own model of what’s happening.
Otherwise, the purposes of this thread and the take I posted from mastodon, I’d say the question of whether AI creates copyrightable works and how the broader industries respond to that and what’s legally required of them stands as fundamental in the medium term.
Now curious to see what legal scholarship is predicting, which in some cases probably a better predictor.
Here's the author's bio:
The author is well aware of the legal side of things.
Oh I’m sure, and it was a good article to be clear. But “the legal side of things”, especially from a certain perspective, and what the courts (and then the legislature) do with a new-ish issue can be different things.
"Kit worked at the law firm of Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, litigating patent, trademark, and copyright cases in courts across the country. Kit holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School"
The EFF is primarily a legal group and the post straight up mentions that it is a legal opinion on the topic.
So I'm not really clear what "the legal side of things" is that you mean separate from what a lawyer who has litigated IP cases before and works focused on the intersection of law and tech says about a pending case in a legal opinion.
Do you just mean a different opinion from different lawyers?
I assume they mean that on topics not thoroughly tested in court, a judge can always make up their own mind based on how they personally feel.
Right, but how would that be reflected in another article ahead of time?
Yea. Legal opinions vary and legal scholars can have problems, sometimes massive, with what courts and legislators end up doing. “Legal side of things”, in quotes, was intended to convey a cynicism/critique of the idea, belief or even desire some might have (not saying you) for the law to be “settled” and clear.
Ah, well if you want the Columbia Journalism Review has a good summary of the developments and links to various other opinions, particularly in the following paragraph:
(Most of those opinions are linked)
Thanks!